What Happens in Vegas: Reflections from Las Vegas Jewelry Week (Part 2)
COUTURE, the antique show, the designers I can't stop thinking about, and what the week told me
Welcome back! If you missed Part 1, here's the gist: five shows, one week, one city I would not otherwise choose to be in. I covered the lay of the land, the view from the booth, and what I found walking JCK Luxury. By the way, this is a lengthy one with lots of images. If you're reading in email, it will be cut off. For the best experience, I recommend viewing in the Substack app.
Let’s get into it!
BABY’S FIRST COUTURE
The editors, stylists, and buyers whose taste is the pinnacle...this is their show. The designers who exhibit here are ones I have followed and, frankly, drooled over on Instagram for years. Many I know from the New York jewelry scene (showroom visits, selling them emeralds, or simply being around), but so many others I had never had the privilege of seeing in person, or knowing about at all. Being in that room felt like a dream and a personal milestone. I was there as press alongside names like Lynn Yaeger, Marion Fasel, Tanya Dukes, Will Kahn, and OG jewelry bloggers Gemologue (Elizaveta Yurlasova) and Katerina Perez, just to name a few.
Held at the Wynn, not the Venetian, a deliberate geographical and psychological remove from the JCK floor, the show is smaller (by comparison), more intimate (in feeling and vibe), more considered. At JCK, buyers come to source: price points, margins, what moves, and yes, what’s next. But the scale is commercial in a way COUTURE simply isn’t and doesn’t try to be. Each booth is its own world. How the jewelry is displayed, the lighting, the carpeting, wallpaper, furniture, the refreshments in some cases — all of it an extension of the designer’s creative identity. You are not just looking at jewelry. You are stepping into someone’s universe, and the person who built it is almost always standing right there inside it. The difference isn’t in how they sell. It’s in why they make. The work comes first here. You feel it the moment you walk in.
I went in with a list of designers to visit, but abandoned it almost immediately. Every booth pulled me in a different direction, and I let it. Seeing work in person, trying it on, touching it, talking to the people who made it: the gap between the screen and the real thing is not small.
There was so much I didn’t get to, so much I walked past without knowing what I was missing. What you have here are my observations: what caught my eye, what I was drawn to, what stayed with me. Consider it a beginning, not a survey…
What united the work that moved me (and there was a lot of it) was a quality I’ve been thinking about all week and still don’t have a perfect word for. These were pieces that demanded something from you. They made you slow down, look closely, ask a question.
Silvia Furmanovich is the clearest example of this. Her work blew my mind. Born into a family of Italian goldsmiths, she travels the world seeking out dying craft traditions and brings them into a contemporary context. What that looks like in practice: wood marquetry from the Amazon, woven bamboo basketry, miniature painting from India, and — the detail I cannot stop thinking about — horsehair. Woven horsehair incorporated into jewelry with a technique so precise and so improbable that you have to stand there for a moment and just accept that it exists. This is not jewelry that is merely expensive. It is jewelry that required something from the person who made it.
Anna Maccieri Rossi spent over a decade designing for Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Bulgari, and Tiffany before launching her own line. A decade designing for those houses shows up in the bones of her work — the precision, the confidence, the sense that nothing is accidental. Her signature is incorporating working watch movements into jewelry. Literal time as a material. A piece that asks you to slow down and count the seconds. Carpe diem made wearable. I found it moving in a way I didn’t expect.
Uniform Object was making a statement before you even looked at the jewelry. This was their first year back at COUTURE with their own booth, having previously shown through a multi-brand sales showroom. Returning on your own terms, with your own space, says something about where a brand is and where it’s going. Founded by David and Katie Farrugia and handmade in New York City, the brand’s own words say it best: “elegant brutality.” Bold, unapologetic, urban. An edge to it, but deeply wearable. In an era of designers pivoting away from gold, Uniform Object is doubling down. The Shield cuff alone, 300 grams of solid 18k yellow gold with nearly 8 carats of emerald-cut diamonds, is an answer to every conversation about restraint. And then there are the rings with dangling pendants that can double as ear cuffs if you dare. Versatility as a design philosophy.
Dezso by Sara Beltran needs no introduction to anyone living in the fashion Substack world — she is it, the designer the cool girls have claimed as their own, and for good reason. Born in El Paso of Mexican descent, splitting time between New York, Mexico, and Jaipur, she works with fossils, shells, shark teeth, and ocean-found materials alongside polki and rose-cut diamonds. If you read my Finds & Fancies piece on Michael Rider’s Celine — the Art Teacher, the talismanic, the well-worn and collected — Sara Beltran is that woman’s jewelry. The earth as collaborator. Soul over sparkle, made physical.
Beck Jewels, Rebecca Zeijdel-Paz, born in Venezuela, raised in Curaçao, is also a Substack darling, and seeing the work in person confirms why. She is on the rise and having a genuine breakout moment. A fine jewelry tribute to a life spent by the sea. Her philosophy: the same piece should work at an ocean swim and a formal affair. Ruthie Friedlander walked me through the collection at the booth. The Scúba rings and necklaces that have been everywhere? Inspired by scuba gear itself. The tension in her designs between raw and polished, strong and fine, is real. You feel it the moment you pick a piece up. I tried on a one-of-a-kind necklace comprised of vintage Murano glass beads, each one mouth-blown, no two the same (green, burgundy, gold lattice, lavender, striped spheres), and I didn't want to take it off. Fun is the word. She plays with color in a way that makes you feel something. That's Beck Jewels.
Susan Cohen's CIRCA 1700 felt like a full-circle moment. Kinetic, mechanical jewelry with secrets built in. I had interviewed Susan for the newsletter — over the phone — and had seen her work in person at the For Future Reference showroom in New York. But this was my first time meeting her face to face, and seeing the work in the context she created for it was something else entirely.
The mechanical clasps, the hidden compartments, the Morse code diamonds — pieces with secrets, pieces that reward the person who pays attention. Two pieces in particular caught my eye: a whistle pendant, available in two sizes, that is exactly what it sounds like — wearable, functional, completely charming. And a horseshoe pendant that reads “Catchin Luck,” with rubies or diamonds set in a channel track around the interior that actually move — sliding, shifting, never quite settling. That last detail says everything: jewelry that does something, that surprises you, that makes you smile.
Looking back at what drew me in across COUTURE, there was a common thread — though I’ll call it mine rather than the market’s. Organic materials, fluid shapes, soft edges, things that feel close to nature or close to the hand that made them. Silvia Furmanovich’s horsehair and wood. Uniform Object’s substantial yet smooth gold cuff, powerful but never hard. CIRCA 1700’s mechanical whimsy. Even where there were edges, there was warmth. I don’t know if that’s a trend or just my eye. Probably both.
The COUTURE Design Awards, the show’s annual recognition of the best work across multiple categories, were held in the Encore Theater at the Wynn. Professional stage lighting, cameras, screens, possibly a teleprompter, intro and outro music, and presenters.
I found myself seated next to the iconic Lynn Yaeger and jewelry designer Johnny Nelson. Johnny is one of the coolest people in the room by the way: sunglasses indoors (at night), one (or was it two?) of his signature four-finger rings, so chill, so laid back, so what I envision as next generation jeweler. Lynn and I got to talking, and the conversation was one of the highlights of my week. Don’t worry, I made the pitch: Lynn, Substack needs you. Your voice, your eye, your perspective — people would lose their minds! We are waiting…
Pen Mané, a Hong Kong-based brand in only their second year at the show, made a big impression, taking home both Best in Innovative and Editors’ Choice. Their signature move: choosing silver for high jewelry deliberately, not as a compromise but as a creative and practical conviction. The work comes first, the material serves it. Pen Mané’s choice is part of a larger conversation happening right now.
ZAHN-Z, the brand of Syrian-American designer Hiba Husayni, won Best in Diamonds Below $40,000 Retail. A trained architect who graduated in Syria in 2011 amid the conflict there, Husayni brings an architectural precision to her jewelry: curves, fluidity, movement, and hidden details that reveal themselves only to the wearer.
Both brands are young, both are doing something new, and both walked away with the room’s attention. Remember these names.
THE ANTIQUE JEWELRY AND WATCH SHOW
I didn’t spend nearly as much time here as I wanted to. The week had its own momentum, and the antique show got a shorter visit than it deserved — I ran through, saying hello to friends, pausing at a few pieces, taking it all in as quickly as I could. But even a fast pass through this world tells you something. It always does.
The most asked about, the most coveted, the most in demand?
Bulgari. The Serpenti watches in particular, across all styles, are in extremely high demand. Elsa Peretti bone cuffs are moving in both silver and gold. The small 18k gold version retails upwards of $24,000 at Tiffany and is trading at a modest discount on the secondary market, which given the demand, says everything. The silver is equally hot and considerably more accessible, and demand isn't slowing on either.
The hunger for objects with a biography, pieces that existed before you and will exist after you, is intensifying.
My friend Sasha Krivitsky of Oakgem, who specializes in signed estate jewelry, reported that Buccellati was the most requested and looked-at brand at her booth this year. It’s a thread she’s been watching for a while. “Craftsmanship like theirs is hard to replicate,” Sasha told me. Pieces by Mario and Gianmaria Buccellati1 are in demand and increasingly difficult to find at what feels like a reasonable price. Part of what’s driving it: since Richemont acquired the brand, they’ve been building a heritage collection and buying back their own pieces for the archives. That kind of institutional investment in a brand’s history has a direct effect on the secondary market. It signals that these objects matter, that someone with serious resources believes they’re worth preserving. And international buyers in particular are paying attention.
“Plain diamond jewelry has been fizzling out. I find people craving color, different materials, something that can’t easily be identified. It will always be a collection staple to own classic diamond pieces, but our customers want uniqueness in their jewelry,” Sasha added.
It’s the same shift I observed at the AGTA booth and across the show floors all week. People want something that tells a story, something that couldn’t have been made by anyone else or found anywhere else. I saw a pear-shaped diamond ring set in a wooden jacket at one of my favorite dealers that gave me pause. The marriage of materials was unexpected and completely right. Stone and wood, precious and organic, unlikely and inevitable. That’s the aesthetic conversation happening right now across both the vintage and contemporary markets — and it's not a coincidence.
Olivia Aurtenechea of Odeon Collection, who specializes in mid-century to 1980s European signed pieces with a focus on French and Italian, confirmed the same energy from where she was standing. “Once we buy, we sell immediately,” Olivia told me. “Everybody wants to buy right now.”
Among the most impossible to source: the Georges L’Enfant zodiac pendants for both Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels are impossible to keep in stock (barely time to inventory them before they’re gone). Fine Cartier pieces from the Art Deco and Belle Époque2 periods are equally coveted: “when you find one, you've won the lottery.” Mid-century Cartier and Van Cleef in lapis, turquoise, coral, chrysoprase, malachite, citrine, and tourmaline are moving. Bulgari Monete, bold and chunky gold, not necessarily diamond-set, is in high demand. And then there is Suzanne Belperron, who famously refused to sign her work. If you know, you know. Olivia also flagged Marina B as one to watch. As Bulgari becomes increasingly unattainable, Marina B, founded by Mario Bulgari’s daughter, is capturing some of that same market. The eye for color, the bold graphic sensibility, the same DNA — at prices that still feel, for now, within reach.
On diamonds, Olivia’s read matched what I was hearing across the floor: the natural diamond market is soft, lab-grown is part of why, but antique diamonds are carving out their own resurgence. Old mine cuts, old Europeans — their warmth, their personality, their unmistakably human geometry. “Most lab-grown are round brilliant cuts,” she noted. “No personality.” The imperfection is the point.
It’s worth noting: Sasha and Olivia are primarily selling to the trade. The end consumer isn’t in this room. But some people have figured out how to change that. The pieces tell one story. How they move tells another.
Briony Raymond and Ali Galgano of Serpentine Jewels, et al, have built a direct line to the end consumer, from the show floor, in real time, straight to their followers’ phones. When Briony or Ali shares a piece on Instagram Stories, they’re not just selling. They’re educating taste, building desire, widening the conversation, and bringing new people into a world that has historically been very good at keeping the door only slightly ajar.
By watching what they post, you know (we know) what’s good, what’s moving, what’s coming before it’s everywhere. Tastemakers, plain and simple. They are doing, organically and instinctively, what the broader industry has spent years failing to do: telling the story to the right people. And it connects to something I keep coming back to: the industry’s story problem isn’t just about who we’re talking to. It’s about who is doing the talking, and whether anyone outside this room can hear it.
WHAT VEGAS TOLD ME
I always need some time after a show to let the noise settle and hear what it was actually saying. Here is what I came home with…
The industry is not in crisis. But it is at a crossroads. The week confirmed something I have been circling for a while now: we are moving toward a specialty market. The middle is hollowing out. What thrives is the very high end and the story-driven, the rare, the specialist. The K-shaped economy isn’t just an academic theory. Jewelers on the floor will tell you it’s very real. Those dealing in everyday goods with no story, or a story that hasn’t been told in a new way, are struggling. Those leaning into the specialized, the singular, the narrative? The conversations have never been better.
Gold prices are reshaping the landscape in ways that are only beginning to show. Some designers pivoted to silver and alternative metals before they had to. For them, the economy simply caught up to a creative choice they had already made. Others are making that pivot now and owning it, like Francesca at KIAIA, whose silver pieces don’t read as compromise. They read as conviction. And somewhere out there, constraint is being dressed up as minimalism. The pressure is real even when it’s invisible. How designers respond to that pressure (whether they hide it, own it, or find another way entirely) will separate the next generation of names from the ones we forget.
Color continues its moment. The evidence is everywhere in this recap: at the booth, in the vintage market, across the show floors. The market is creating the migration.
But here is the thing that stayed with me most. I moderated a panel on natural diamonds early in the week, and the takeaway was simple and devastating in equal measure: the industry is talking to itself. Dealers, designers, trade press, show floors…we are in a room talking to each other. Not because the room is closed (the trade show is for the trade, as it should be), but because what happens in that room rarely makes it out to the people who actually buy and wear jewelry. The consumer gets their information from ChatGPT, their jeweler, and whatever story lands first. The lab-grown has done a far better job seeding that space with a clean, simple narrative: ethical, affordable, identical. Even where that narrative is incomplete. Natural diamonds, colored stones, the Botswana story, the human chain from mine to finger: these are richer, truer stories. But they are not reaching the right people.
Walk these show floors long enough and another pattern emerges: a lot of the same faces, year after year. The old guard in the same old places, having the same conversations. I say this with love and respect for what was built. But progress requires new blood. New storytellers. New ideas and new perspectives to challenge the stasis. The conversation doesn’t evolve if the room never changes.
But I did see signs of change this week. Dorian Webb, building her path through the Emerging Designers Diamond Initiative. Pen Mané and ZAHN-Z walking away with COUTURE awards in their first or second year. Olivia at Odeon and Sasha at Oakgem, bringing a new generation’s eye to mid-century signed pieces. The room is changing. Slowly, but it is changing.
What gives me hope (and there is genuine hope here) is the quality of the work. Designers choosing their materials with intention and philosophy rather than convention. Work that demands something from the person looking at it. Pieces that make you slow down, ask a question, start a conversation. That is what the industry needs more of. Not just in design, but in storytelling, in outreach, in who gets to be in the room.
My newsletter exists because this gap exists: between the trade and the people who love what the trade produces. Every show I walk, every conversation I have, every designer I discover and write about is a small attempt to widen the door. I say it because I think more of us need to be trying and doing it in earnest. It has been a privilege to work in this field in all the capacities that I have.
We have a story problem, not a product problem. The product has never been more interesting. The question is who is telling the story, and whether anyone outside this room can hear it.
Thank you for reading! This was a big one, and I appreciate you being here for it. I’d love to know your thoughts: what resonated, what surprised you, what you want to hear more about. The conversation is always better when you’re in it.
Coming up: a closer look at the colored stones industry's story problem — who is telling it, who isn’t, and what that means for the stones we love. And a proper Colombian emerald deep dive, among other exciting things.
Until next time, your friend,
Veronica
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Further reading…
Mario Buccellati founded the house in Milan in 1919, and his grandson Gianmaria continued the legacy through the late 20th century. The pieces collectors are hunting for are their vintage, signed work — handmade using the house’s original goldsmithing techniques — not the current production since Richemont’s acquisition.
Belle Époque refers to the period roughly 1880 to 1914 when Cartier, under Louis Cartier’s direction, developed its signature Garland Style — light, intricate, platinum-set jewelry inspired by 18th-century French decorative arts. The pieces are characterized by their almost weightless lace-like quality and remain among the most coveted of all Cartier’s output.
Veronica, that was so good, so insightful, so full of beautiful and artistic creations! I love the looking back to the fine jewelry of the past, and seeing how it’s reinterpreted. The bone cuffs are always a classic and my jaw DROPPED at the woven horsehair earrings. What!? And the contrast of the high-low embodied in the diamond and wood ring? Perfect.
I do feel like the pendulum is swinging away from boring and souless pieces to jewelry that’s got heirloom potential. I know that my family pieces, even if costume, means far more to me than a plain diamond ring.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and pictures! This is clearly a labour of love (and I do know how much work goes into it), so please know I appreciate it.💕